


Days Gone Bye

by veiledndarkness



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 11:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3065807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veiledndarkness/pseuds/veiledndarkness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year's ending, another looms over them and it's never going to get any easier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Days Gone Bye

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in a vague post season 3 up to mid season 4 sense of timing.

Her voice is a wisp at first, hardly there, as if she's more humming than singing. It catches his ear and he blinks to hear the near whisper of a tune, words he hasn't heard in a dog's age. His lips quirk and he tilts his head, pausing in his task of cleaning his knife, listening.

_...should old acquaintance be forgot..._

He's brought back in that instant, taken by the memory of hearing his mother sing, off key as always while she chased the tip of her wobbling cigarette that's clamped between her lips with her lighter. He can see her as clear as the knife and rag in his hands, lipstick stained mouth trembling as she inhales, eyes as glassy as ever and he can hear her mournful version of that song coming from her, cursing the end of another year, bitter and broken and worn down by a life that's let her down in every way.

_...and never brought to mind?..._

Her voice though, Beth's, is sweet, light and youthful, and as she sings a touch louder, he grips the ragged red cloth in his hands, hearing the cracked, tearful singing of his mother at the kitchen table overlapping the soft tune that's floating closer to him. The bleakness of their home, nothing worth celebrating in that year or any other year is no different than the grim gray cells around them now and he feels the ache that's Merle shaped in his chest pang anew. 

_...should old acquaintance be forgot..._

He misses him more than he ever thought he could and it hurts more than he ever expected it to, and the ache never really stops. Survival trumps everything but there isn't a day where he doesn't mourn Merle, if only in passing. He grits his teeth and Beth sings on in her cell, Judith likely clasped in her arms. 

_...and auld lang syne!..._

There's no need for calendars, not anymore, but still she sings on, she must know that by the chill in the air that this year is ending, that another is looming on the horizon. He dips his head and scrubs at dried blood on his knife, blinking until his eyes stop stinging. 

He hates this time of year.


End file.
